


Before the Beginning and After the End

by Tzavine



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Angst, Big Gay Emotions, Choking, Crying, Explicit Sexual Content, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Sensory Deprivation, Sleepovers, basically its real dark in there and roxas cant see too good, but not the dacraphylia kind, im truly not here to fuck around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 09:24:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20871914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tzavine/pseuds/Tzavine
Summary: Roxas wakes up to something he wasn't meant to see.





	Before the Beginning and After the End

**Author's Note:**

> what is up everybody, who's up for some x-treem teen emotions and hormones?? i hope u are, because this is part of my ongoing attempt to get my rp partner as into vanitas as i am. en fukin joy, ilu
> 
> VERY beta read by [misstresscelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCeliaKnight/pseuds/MistressCelia), they done fixed up all my missing punctuations and misspelled words

They had all been getting to know each other better recently, which apparently in Sora’s mind meant they all simply HAD to have a sleepover, just the four of them. Riku wasn’t really part of the strange interlocking origin story that connected most of their other friends, and Kairi, Xion, and Namine were all girls with their own sleepover capabilities at Kairi's house, which meant that Roxas, Ventus, Sora, and Vanitas had the whole downstairs to themselves. They watched a movie, ate snacks, and played goofy board games with made up rules until they were all so tired they couldn’t keep their eyes open.  
  
It was fun. Roxas really hadn’t expected to have so much fun, but things had really gotten a lot better between them. Well, at least where Vanitas was concerned. He was downright tolerable, and seeing the way Sora and Ventus enjoyed themselves was enough to push Roxas’ doubts right out the window.  
  
When it came time to sleep, long after night had fallen, Roxas had stationed himself on the farthest left of the space Sora had cleared for them in the living room, the others all splayed out next to him. Sora took the spot next to him, Vanitas took the next one, and Ven mirrored Roxas on the end. It was comfortable. Nice. He peacefully fell asleep in the wink of an eye, only to blearily blink awake seemingly instantly later.  
  
He thought he'd heard something. Some odd little sound, like a whine maybe, off to his right. After a moment of squinting into the indistinct darkness, Roxas was just about to give up, when- _ “Hnn! _ ” -it came again.  
  
A chill ran down Roxas’ body. Suddenly very alert, all the sleep evaporated out of of his limbs, because that wasn't a normal sound of dissatisfaction. That wasn’t just a whine, that was a moan, and it was coming from the same room they were all in. Someone, off to his right, was doing something that involved _ moaning _ and Sora, then Vanitas, then Ventus were all in the direction of those lazy little sounds. Roxas stared bug eyed into the darkness like a deer in headlights.

He hazarded a sideways glance.

Looking over, he just saw the dark, slanted outline of someone's shoulders, propped up on one elbow and facing away. There was a subtle bend of knees beyond them, shifting slightly as if whoever they belonged to couldn’t decide whether to lay them flat, let them fall open, or curl them into their chest. Another strangled little "Ah-_ hhn!" _ curled into the silence of the darkness around them and Roxas' guts clenched. That voice, it sounded like-

_ "Sora..!" _Sora's voice sighed. 

Roxas' eyebrows creased. _ Wait, what? _

"Shh, you have to be quiet!" a voice that sounded even _ more _ like Sora's whispered. Roxas only noticed the person propped up had been moving when the outline of their shoulders grew still. It was a little rhythmic shift, barely there at the very edge of that sloping corner. A small, pulsing bounce that once it was gone, Roxas realized was the pull of muscles as the figure moved its arm.

_ Or maybe it’s… _ Roxas ears felt warm, incredulousness seeping over him like molasses. _ His hand. _

Who exactly _ he _ was, Roxas couldn’t tell. His awareness snapped back to him in an instant as his brain frantically tried to fit these puzzle pieces together.

The hushed conversation continued, the knees settling still and upright. Roxas pricked up his ears to listen.

"M'sorry."

"We can’t wake them up. You have to be _ good." _

The knees lift a little, curling in frustration. The first Sora voice deepens, more of its natural tone seeping into the whisper. _ Vanitas _ . "I'm _ trying." _

"I know," _ Sora _-Sora murmured with an intimate fondness. It sounded like he was smiling, and just hearing his vowel sounds shaped like that flashed Sora's kind eyes over Roxas' vision. He sounded like he had when he and Roxas first got to talk after everything that happened. He had been so happy to "have their first heart to heart" about getting to be in the same place at the same time. He had looked so ... Sentimental. Warm.

It made his heart skip a beat hearing him sound like that again and Roxas was overcome with shame at being there for it. He was an intruder in their quiet moment, why were they doing this _ here, _ right next to him? When Roxas was distinctly aware that he was _ not supposed to be aware of this? _

Vanitas interrupted his sudden confused embarrassment by whispering something back quiet enough that Roxas can't quite make it out, even though he strains his ears to catch it without thought.

"....-outh-.. keep it do-... -efore?"

Roxas tilted his head just so, barely able to pick up Sora's answer over the sound of his own blood racing in his ears. 

"So that’s what it takes? You're so needy." 

_ "You _ woke me up for this," Vanitas reminded, voice so quiet it was barely there at all.

Sora's shadowy shoulders hunched sideways as he leaned more into the elbow propping him up, the indistinct points of his hair rotating downwards and forward. "So long as you're quiet."

"Of course." 

Roxas feared his eyes were overadjusted to the darkness. The edges of their silhouettes were fuzzy and indistinct, buzzing like tv static against the slightly different grey they were backlit against.

Roxas had no idea what to do with himself. He shouldn't be here, they shouldn't be doing this, what even was it exactly they were doing?? He couldn’t see well enough to tell, but he thought- 

It sounded like kissing. 

Roxas' eyes burned into the darkness, frustrated with the limitations of his own perception. He couldn’t tell if the little dips and bobs of Sora's head were _ real _ or tricks of his mind. How much could he trust the blurry edges to be true? It was so dark, was he just seeing what he wanted to see?

Wait, "what he _ wanted to see?" _ Oh no this was bad, this was very very very bad. Roxas' breathing was starting to deepen, oh no, he felt warm oh _ no. _

Another shift of fabric and Sora's shoulder flexed, whatever he did on the other side of himself pulling a little hitching gasp out of Vanitas' lungs.

_ "Tease!" _ he hissed, muffled like his mouth was half occupied with other things.

"No tease," Sora murmured back, just as indistinct. His shoulder flexed in that same way again. "I've got you."

"Mmn," one of them half sighs half whines, Roxas couldn’t tell which, as the quiet kisses started up again. 

Roxas’ breath came quicker and quicker in his lungs, equal parts panic, interest, and burgeoning arousal. He needed to get a hold of himself, or else his heavier and heavier breathing was going to rival theirs. Luckily they seemed completely absorbed in each other.

The staticy edges of Vanitas' knees went solid for a moment as he moved them, one falling a little flatter than the other. The sound of his socks disturbing the sheets beneath him was loud in the otherwise quiet room, but not as sharp as the wet sounds from higher up. 

Vanitas' legs flexed, the angle of their slope towards his hips shifting upward, and Roxas' mouth went dry. There was only one movement that made that outline make sense, but the more Roxas watched the less he understood. He was pushing up into whatever Sora was doing to him on the other side.

Roxas' panicked heart thumped in his chest. He had to, he couldn't, he just needed to _ stop watching, idiot, what was he doing! _

He squeezed his eyes shut with enough force to make him see sparkles in the outer corners of his blackened vision, but not seeing what caused them just made the sounds even _ louder_.

The faint rustling of clothing brushing over skin tickled over his eardrums like it was amplified. All of it, the hollow puff of air pushing through noses because mouths were occupied, the glistening smack of lips, the slide of hands over clothed skin, it was all unavoidable. All of it wove around Roxas in surround sound as if someone had turned the volume up on Sora and Vanitas’ handsy encounter the second Roxas looked away from it.

He knew he should feel scandalized- _ a tantalizing, throaty grunt _ -about what was going on right next to him. This wasn't something- _ a shift in sound, skin on skin rather than fabric rustling _ -people were supposed to do, was it? They were supposed to- _ Sora was moving faster, he _ had _ to be, sounds were picking up _ -ASK before things like this happened right?? People weren't supposed to just make other people go- _ "Hn-ahh, hahh...!" _ -while other people were asleep right next to them, it wasn't right!

He knew he should be mad and freaked out and he was, but not for the reasons he was supposed to be! His mind was going a mile a minute as his Other, the person he knew best in the world, the boy he and Ventus both had lived within for years, kissed _ Vanitas _ of all people right next to him.

He was mad because this felt like a secret. He was mad because he didn't know how long this had been going on. He was mad because-

Because!

Because.... He had been too afraid to do the same thing.

He hadn't known this was even on the table for them, and if it was.... If anybody, he would have thought it'd be Ventus if it wasn't himself. They were just so similar. He never would have guessed _ Vanitas! _

But listening to them breathe and _ touch, _ he thought maybe he should have. Sora and Ventus had both taken such a vested interest in their dark counterpart's recovery. It only made sense that they would grow close. 

_ "Closer," _ came the whispering sigh, followed by more fabric shifting. Roxas peeked at them and then his eyes blew wide as dinner plates.

He should have made his presence known as soon as he woke up. He waited too long to stop it and now all he could do was lay frozen as he watched Sora's dark outline push up and over one of Vanitas' equally shadowed legs. He sunk down and the points of Vanitas' knees came back up behind him.

They came together and settled, the barest shifting of fabric sounding between them. Sora started to move again and Roxas' face flushed hotter than he thought possible.

He had never seen him move like that, didn't even dare to imagine it, and here it was right in front of him; a slight, bowed bunch to his lower back as his shadow shifted back and then an arch as it slowly dragged back forward.

This wasn't the desperate, foolhardy movement of something caught up in the moment. Maybe he was thrusting slow against Vanitas in an effort to keep quiet, but it felt like it lingered more than that. It was slow. Practiced. Familiar. And absolutely enthralling to see.

Against all of his sense of what was morally right to do, Roxas found he couldn't look away. His eyes grew heavy, his cheeks feverish, his blood buzzed beneath his ears, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the sway and grind of Sora’s lower back.

That was when hands start wandering. Roxas could tell in the way that the angles of elbows breached out from Sora's back. Two more even, hand shaped bumps moved over Sora's shoulders contrasted with the sharp pointed hinge of Sora's elbow. Sora was feeling his way down Vanitas’ body, lingering where he pleased, and kissing all along the way. Roxas’ hazy eyes followed the rubbing pressure of his hand down low, lower, until-

Roxas could see the flex in his arm, see how it changed the shape. Sora had grabbed something, he was sure of it, and Vanitas' knee hiked higher over his hip. 

"Mnn?" Vanitas chimed a low, questioning sound. _ Pleased. _

In answer, Sora took his time with his next pass, hips dropping lower, harder than before. Vanitas' head separated itself from Sora’s shadow, thunking back flat onto the floor. Without something to occupy his mouth, Sora took up residence near Vanitas's neck. 

In perfect profile, sending a throbbing wave of heat through his body, Roxas saw Vanitas' mouth drop open and twitch in extacy.

Then everything froze as a 5th hand lifted into the air beyond them.

Vanitas' grip on Sora's shoulder sharpened to claws, tension bleeding from his half of their shared shadow. Sora looked up in confusion, then followed where Vanitas’ face was pointed. As soon as he saw the hand, he shrunk into Vanitas. Both of them hunkered down, silent, like cats waiting for a truck to pass above a metal grate. 

The tension in the air between all three of them was potent, and Roxas didn’t even dare to breathe. Ventus's fist, arm loose and hand somehow clenched, swayed in the air. A loud yawn broke the clamor of Roxas' heartbeat in his ears.

Sora's hips gave a quick little jerk downwards and Vanitas hissed something in warning, claws digging into him deeper. Roxas couldn't believe it! Now?? While Ven could be awake?? 

Then Ventus' arm fell limp back down to the floor, beyond Roxas' limited vision. He heard him shifting under his covers, the nonsensical grumbles and hums growing quiet as he turned the other direction. 

Oh thank god. He slept like the DEAD, they weren't found out after all. Roxas sagged in relief, then immediately stiffened back up. Why was he relieved?? He was not part of this, why did it feel like HE could have been caught when it was Sora and Vanitas who were- were-

Who were sharing quiet little laughs and_ starting back up again. _

"I thought you didn't want to get caught?" Vanitas murmured, just barely above audible range and half the consonants muddled. His knees relaxed back down, but his claws did not.

"Nothing wakes Ven up before dawn, I knew he wouldn't wake up." Sora's shadow didn't raise back up to where it was before. He remained low, their shadows pressed so thin that Roxas couldn’t imagine there was a millimeter of space between them. 

"Yeah, sure, _ that's _ why you jumped out of your skin."

It was why Roxas jumped out of his, for sure. He couldn’t believe they were still going after that. Shouldn't they at least move to another part of the house? Now that he thought about it, why had they been doing this here to begin with? The space where the coffee table usually sat in Sora's living room couldn't possibly be a more comfortable place to _ dry hump _ than Sora's bedroom upstairs.  
  
They could do so much more in true privacy than they ever could here! Just the effort to be quiet alone didn’t seem worth it to Roxas, why wouldn’t they have opted for another setting for this late night grinding. They could do so much more.

Just the thought of what more they could get up to behind closed, locked doors had Roxas' eyelids falling heavy again, his insides going warm. Sora, curling his fingers past a pretty, pink rim that welcomes him like it was made for it. Vanitas, biting down on gently on his own knuckles, chest bare and flushed as he watched Sora work between his thighs. Sora's face falling slack and then pinched with pleasure as he felt the crushing heat of Vanitas' insides squeeze around him. The _ sound _ Vanitas would make as Sora slid, heavy and throbbing, as deep inside him as he could g-

_ Snap out of it! _

"Aww, c'mon Vanitas, Didn't anybody ever tell you how to take a joke?" Sora defended as he rolled his body in another thrust, words muffled against what must be Vanitas' chest based on the angle of his flipping hair.

"That's supposed to be a joke?"

"Was it funny?"

"Real funny," Vanitas chuckled, breathless, vowels tinged with a smile.

"Then it was a joke." Laughter melded into low gasping sounds of approval as Sora changed his pace.

Sora shifted into a new, deeper rhythm. He spent all his time on the forward drag, as if savoring every millimeter of pressure on the way over Vanitas' hips, and then quickly swooped himself back to the starting spot to begin again. Like a pressure massage, he dug himself into the valley between Vanitas' knees slow and hard.

Roxas felt like he was going to explode. He was only a teenager, like the rest of them, there was only so much he could _ do _ to stand things like this before his body was responding, and the way Sora was working himself up just a few feet away was _ not helping. _ Guilty, interested blood was pooling deep and low, and there was nothing Roxas could do to stop it.

When did Sora get whatever _ this _ was into him? When did he become the kind of person to pin someone else down with his body and rut against them? When did he learn to _ move _ like that, so smooth and assured and purposeful? 

When did he learn that he could speed up?

Vanitas' head arched back into the pillow, Roxas could tell by the way the outline of his hair shifted and the point of his jaw surfaces. He watched, enraptured, as the line of Sora's body dragged quicker and heavier into Vanitas'. The roll of the movement carried all the way up the both of them, starting in Sora's hips and then up his back and over his shoulders. The shock of the motion then dropped into Vanitas' chest before it finally finished in the surprised, gasping drop of Vanitas' jaw.

_ "S-Sora, oh-!" _ Vanitas shuddering voice broke on a hitching of breath and echoed in Roxas’ head. He sounded just like Sora again. 

Roxas' hands twitched towards the throbbing hardness between his legs, but the shift of the sleeping bag material stopped him before he moved an inch. Stupid! He should have slept on blankets and pillows like the rest of them, unzipping a sleeping bag had come back to bite him. He squeezed his hands together hard enough to hurt, almost too afraid to blink and miss a second of the shadows in front of him. 

_ "Shh!" _ Sora whisper-yelled, not daring to pick up the pace.  
  
“Hmng! Ah-ahh-!” Sora lifted his shadowy head and a hand came up with it, darting up towards Vanitas' open and panting mouth. 

Roxas' eyebrows furrowed in the darkness. From the angle and shift of Sora's outline, that hand belongs to him. What was he..?

Sora's hand came down over Vanitas' mouth and muffled the low moan burbling up from Vanitas' chest against it. "You're gonna get us caught!"

The way he says it, so earnest and frank and worried and _ Sora _-like, tells Roxas that he didn't think that hand was anything at all. He saw it as a way to keep Vanitas quiet, keep those sounds out of the night air around them, nothing more. He was oblivious to how dominant, possessive, controlling it was, because it was just the quickest and easiest way for him to handle the current circumstances. Sora was always quick on his feet, quick to take action, and apparently this type of thing was no different. Vanitas was getting loud, he needed to stop that, that's all it was to him.

But to Roxas? _ Fuck, _ watching Sora manhandle someone like that shot straight fire through Roxas' veins. From the jump of his shadowy knees, it affected Vanitas the same way.

In silhouette, Roxas saw Vanitas claw at the hand over his mouth as Sora's spine curled quickly from an S shape into a C. The sounds didn't stop, not really. They were just smaller, hollow, leaking out of Vanitas' exposed nose alongside his panting breaths. Sora pulled his hips back to S, then forward to C, S, C-

The sound of their breathing, of fabric shifting between them, beneath them, was so loud in the quiet room. It was deafening. Was it deafening, or was Roxas just hyper aware of every sound between them? Was it really so all encompassing and unavoidable and cacophonous, or was that just the blood pounding behind Roxas' ears? All of it seemed to surround him, Vanitas' errant, pitchy grunts, the slide of Sora’s socked foot gripping for purchase on the windbreaker exterior of Roxas’ zipped open sleeping bag, the muffled whine that was too clear to belong to _ Vanitas. _

_ S C S C S C S C- _

It hurt, pulsed, and Roxas gave in. He took a risk.

He couldn't help it, it was too much. With a pang of shame, he released his iron-wrought grip on his interlaced fingers and plunged the arm he wasn't laying on down. He just needed some relief, just a little bit, just enough not to hurt.

The palm of his hand pressed down over his erection and his eyes nearly fluttered shut. It felt so good, thank god, he finally, _ finally _ had something to press up against. Just the flat of his palm holding his painfully hard shaft up against his lower belly, the smallest grind down on the underside, had Roxas' eyes screwing shut. It felt _ blissful _ after keeping his hands off for so long. Too good, too good, entirely too too too good. 

_ “Hahhhn,” _ the barest shudder of relief worked its way up Roxas' throat at the same time that Vanitas made another strangled grunt. Thank god something else was there to swallow the sound. He could hear them still, every movement pressing in around him like thick cotton until all it was all he can focus on. The world was reduced to nothing but the hot throb he rub- _ smothered _ between his legs and the _ S,C,S,C,S,C,S- _ his mind conjured up to match the noises.

_ He shouldnt be doing this, he shouldn't be doing this, he shouldn't be doing thi- _ He opened his heavy eyes back up, face on fire, and watched Sora's body churn against Vanitas, trapped, silenced, and squirming beneath him. 

_ "Mmf- hhfhh!" _ bled around the edges of Sora's palm. Vanitas' knees twitched, and he pulled desperately at Sora's hand. He jerked his mouth free with a gasp that was very clearly trying to be as quiet as possible. 

_ "Sora," _ he breathed, "S'not enough, I need-"

"You're gonna get a mark," Sora warned, voice thick and low with exertion.

Vanitas' head shook, the pointed tips of his hair rotating in outline. _ "Don't care!" _

"If you say so," Sora relented, body shifting upward. His knees inched under him further until he nearly sat on his haunches, but all of his weight was forward. He planted his hands onto Vanitas, one dead center of his chest and the other-

Roxas squinted, blinking, trying to make sense of what he saw. The outline of Sora's shoulder rotated, his arm stretching forward, to slide his palm up Vanitas' sternum. He brushed over the pointed jut of collarbone settled over the long expanse of a willingly exposed throat. 

"I'm not taking your hands, so if you need me to stop, shake my shoulder"

Roxas' whole body flushed in a mixture of horror and arousal._ What?? _

"Maybe if you actually hurt me this time, I'll get to shake you out of it." 

Roxas’ eyes bugged, heartbeat racing in his chest._ What?!? 'This time'??_  
  
Not only did they do this kind of thing in general enough to be comfortable trying to get off together right next to both of their other halves, but Sora had ch- _choked_ Vanitas enough times for him to _goad him_ about it? 

Sora's bottom lip jutted out of his profile in a clear pout. The exact expression on Sora's face flashed in Roxas' mind, and for a moment he could have sworn he saw it on Sora's face, light or no light. 

"Hey, I don't like hurting you for real, you know that." 

Roxas somehow heard Vanitas' eyeroll in the darkness. The staticy outlines of his hands came up to wrap around Sora's wrist, knuckles flexing tight around it.

"God Sora, stop being sappy already and _ make me cum." _

The pout pulling on Sora's lip changed shape, deepening into a frown. He shifted backwards and then rolled his weight forwards again, his forearm flexing as he clenched around Vanitas and gave him a shake. A shake _ by the throat. _

Roxas' stuttering heartbeat pulsed so hard, he swore he felt it jump under his palm. His restraint was hanging on by a thread. The effort of remaining still was edging to ever higher into new, more impossible limits, but all the same he_ held on. _

Vanitas, -lucky, lucky, fortunate Vanitas- hissed a breath inward at being jerked around even the small, cautionary amount he was. His legs shifted seemingly of their own accord, a flexed foot rising to stick out of the back of Sora's shadow. 

_ So he was feeling it too, _ Roxas thought and then kicked himself for his stupidity. _ Of course _ he was feeling it, he was getting to feel _ everything. _

"Not until you promise!" Sora insisted, voice whisper quiet but no less earnest for it. It was like he didn't even know how dissonant his warm, happy voice was when he was talking about these things. Like it was natural, like any other thing, like this was normal. "I won't do anything if you don't promise me you won't let me hurt you!"

Sora gave him another shake at the end of his sentence for emphasis and that upraised foot twitched upwards with it. 

Apparently Vanitas decided this argument was stupid and relented after a gasp. Roxas' shorts stained themselves with the jealousy seeping out of him as he heard the smile in Vanitas' words. 

_ "Fine, fine! _ I promise, I won't let you do anything that'd be hard to fix. I swea- _ agk!" _

Sora's forearm flexed and cut Vanitas' words off at the source at the same time as he rolled his body heavy against him. 

_ Thank god _ they were moving again, now there was noise to cover up the shaken exhale Roxas' accidentally let slip past his lips. He clenched his shirt with the hand that wasn’t trying to press his aching erection away. It was getting harder and harder to tell if his flexing legs were holding him still or if the rhythmic pulse burning in his cock was him grinding against his palm. 

Sora kept moving.

Ashamed, aroused, arrested by the sight the sounds the _ smell _ of what was going on in front of him, Roxas let his fingers hold him through his clothes. The fabric wouldn't let him close his fist, but it let him squeeze and pull that aching pressure up and down.

Without even realizing it consciously, Roxas tuned the minimal, terrified, blissful shift of his hand to Sora's pace. His eyelashes criss crossed over his eyes and blurred his vision even more, but still he followed the shifting shadows. 

If it had been alarming before to see Sora's body moving the way it had been, this was enrapturing. Being raised up higher over Vanitas, propped up on his arms- _ both holding Vanitas down, keeping him still, stopping the air in his lungs _ -kept his shoulders nearly still. But his hips. Roxas could now fully appreciate the wave that his body moved through as he rutted against the prone boy beneath him.

And his pace was absolutely _ relentless. _ There was too much happening all at the same time for Roxas to do anything more than stare at the near-silent visual cacophony before him; Vanitas' jaw dropped around soundless, aching gasps, Sora undulated hard, full, and fast against him, and Vanitas clawed at Sora's wrists and shoulders, but all that rose above the pounding heartbeat in his ears was the haggard nasal intake of breath and the ever present rubbing of cloth. 

It was over in seconds.  
  
Vanitas gaped like a fish, head falling back and body curling inward. As soon as he started to spasm, Sora's grip automatically slackened around his throat, the shape of his wrist changing with it. Practiced, familiar, he shifted both hands to the center of Vanitas' chest and continued rutting against him. 

Vanitas' hands laid themselves over Sora's and gripped at his wrists as he laid nearly limp but for the shudders that wracked through him erratically. As Roxas watched, Sora's head fell forward, focused on his own pleasure. 

"C'mon," Vanitas' hoarse whisper jerked Roxas' focus to his lips. He couldn't help it, his eyes were chasing every shift between them no matter how small. 

He was so tuned in to every movement that passed between them that his fingers were stroking himself in time with them. He couldn’t even find it in himself to feel guilty, he just felt _ too good _ watching. Vanitas shifted strangely beneath Sora, and it took two halting undulations of his body for Roxas to understand what he was seeing. Through the feverish haze throbbing down his own face and body, he realized Vanitas was lazily trying to meet Sora's thrusts. 

Appreciative, Sora adapted to meet him even more, breath hitching in his throat just barely loud enough for Roxas to hear. 

Roxas couldn't take it. He gave in. Pawing at himself through his clothing wasn’t going to cut it, he needed to _ move, _ even if it was just enough to satiate the need coiling deep within him _ . _He slipped his hand inside his shorts, cupped his palm against the underside of his leaking cock, and gave the smallest, barest thrust he could manage. His whole body gave a tremor of delight, and he wrapped his fingers around himself fully to thrust again. The way the flared ridge of his soaked and sensitive cockhead caught on the pad of his thumb felt so good

He closed his eyes and let himself imagine the whisper quiet pants of breath from barely two feet away were for him.  
  
Tears welled up at the edges of his closed eyes as beautiful, slippery friction stoked the flame within him tighter. His jaw dropped and the images he had been devouring flashed behind his eyes, only shifted. Like the liquid smoke their shadows seemed to be made of, they reformed in his minds eye, rotated, so that Roxas was the one Sora was bearing down on. 

His ears pricked with the scant sounds in front of him, imagining they were coming from above, below. Roxas' jaw dropped, swallowing his throaty grunts before they made it out. _ Don't make a sound, don't make a sound, don't make a sound! _ He fucked his fist once, twice, three times, hips snapping desperate and decisive, and-

"Ah!- _ Hk-!" _Sora faltered from the rhythm Roxas was drumming to. 

_ Yes, finally, please, _ sparked through Roxas' hazy mind like a lit match. What had been building in Sora was building in him too. His eyes blinked open and there Sora was right before him, growing erratic. Each thrust seemed to want to be the last, like his body was determined to meld his hips against Vanitas' no matter how many tries it took. Roxas squeezed his hand to meet each of his own quickening thrusts, realization sparking hot and warm in the base of his skull and drawn eyebrows. _ We're going to- _

Sora snapped forward and stayed, muscles bunching taut, just as everything in Roxas' body tightened too. Together..!  
  
Roxas shoved his other hand inside his sleep shorts just in time for the heat- warm, blissful, wonderful- to lock him up tight. He covered himself with both hands, blocking the shot with one and catching it in the cup of the other, as relief exploded hot and thick from the head of his cock. 

It soaked the fingers of one hand completely before settling in the desperately positioned palm beneath, and breathless, Roxas thanked every powerful being he could think of that he only missed a little.   
  
_ Relief. _ He closed his eyes tight, doing his best to control his deep, heavy breathing as he stroked himself slow through his orgasm, pulling one last pump into his palm. His heartbeat fell from a desperate hammer to a buzzing thrum within his body. The air flowed careful and silent through his open mouth so as not to be heard after all of that. What a joke it would be to get caught being careless _ now _ of all times; Now with ease warming him from his bones outward and cum seeping gently through the spaces of his too lax fingers. 

Desperation fizzled out of him, leaking in one last dribbling pulse from the head of his cock. Without it, now all Roxas felt in the wake of his orgasm was shame. What had he _ done _ , this was so stupid, and more than that, _ what was he going to do now? _

Something moved, again, directly in front of him, and Roxas opened his eyes to see it. He had already devoured each tv-static shift of every thrust and gasp between them, what more did he have to lose? He might as well see whatever conclusion they were going to make for themselves. He forced his eyes to make sense of what had happened, apparently having missed some things after he and Sora both came.

The distance between the two of them had evaporated. Sora's shadow now laid flush with Vanitas', overlapping so heavily that Roxas could tell Sora was nosed up underneath Vanitas' jaw along his throat. There were two lumps on Sora's back- _ Arms. Vanitas was holding him _ -and then the points of knees rose again out of Sora's shadow lower down. Vanitas must have propped his legs back up too. 

The lower lump on Sora's back began to drift up and down, Vanitas' hand soothing over his ribs as he waited for Sora to catch his breath too. 

"I came," Sora confessed, voice warm in that way only Sora's could be. 

"Gross."  
  
"Sorry," Sora sighed breathlessly, not sounding sorry at all. 

Vanitas hummed but otherwise stayed silent as the two of them gradually returned their breathing to normal. All the while, that same shadowy lump shifted over Sora's back. 

When had they grown this close? Had it happened when all this other stuff had begun to happen too? Had this come first, this _ intimacy _ , or had it been the other way around? Had sex somewhere along the way given way to this comfortable _ closeness _ that radiated from their every practiced move?  
  
He thought he knew everything about Sora, when had that changed?

Sora lifted his head and pressed a kiss to Vanitas' chin before shifting back and onto his feet. He crouched at Vanitas' heels, reaching down to take Vanitas' hands in his. "Come on, we should handle this before we get sticky." 

"So getting up is an option after all," Roxas could hear the eye roll in Vanitas' words as Sora hauled him up to standing. They didn't let go of each other, standing inches apart. "What happened to 'it's too noisy'?"

Sora's head dipped sideways, shoulders dropping with a bashful sway. "Well, I don’t think I could have walked straightl. I'm pretty sure I would have fallen on Ven."

"Oh, yeah, and what a tragedy that would be. Seriously though, Sora," Vanitas' voice lost its usual smug, teasing edge. "We shouldn't be doing things like that, what if they had woken up? I mean, how do we even really know that they're asleep?"

Roxas' blood ran cold. 

Sora snorted gently. "Ventus is snoring, you really think he's secretly awake and watching us?"

A pause while both of their shadows shifted, looking down towards Ventus. He really was snoring, Roxas could hear his gentle snuffling all the way from over here.

"No, but still. Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me all that right and wrong bulshit? I don’t need any lessons to know that this wasn’t cool." 

Sora had the decency to sound sheepish. "Yeah, you're right, I'm sorry. I just got a little carried away."

"What about Roxas?"

Roxas hastily closed his eyes as he felt their attention shift to him in the darkness. He held so absolutely still, he had to remind himself that breathing was normal as the pause lengthened over him. 

"He wouldn't. He'd tell us, he's not like that." Sora spoke with such certainty that Roxas' heart twisted in his chest. 

"Mn," came Vanitas' skeptical but noncommittal response. 

"I'm serious!" Sora whispered, pulling Vanitas towards the stairway that led to his room. "He's a really good person, you just don't know him like I do."

As Roxas heard their footsteps fade up to the second floor, he squeezed his eyes tight and gave a deep sigh through his nose. Tears pricked behind his eyes, but he willed them away, sitting up and reaching sideways for his bag of things from home. He cleaned his hand off on the shirt he had worn the day before, stuffed it back into the bag, and laid himself back down. 

Sora knew everything about him, sure, but... how well did he really know Sora?  
  
After tonight, he didn’t know. Shooting a glance over towards where he heard Ven’s sleepy, snuffly noises coming from, he thought about how lucky he was. Things would be so much easier right now if Roxas had been like Ven and just not woken up.  
  
With a sigh, he rolled over to face the wall. Maybe if he just curled up and laid still, he could fall asleep quickly and not have to think about the Sora shaped cracks forming in his heart.  
  
No such luck. Just as he felt the tentative tendrils of sleep reaching up to consider welcoming him, he heard a tip toeing commotion at the top of the stairs.They were coming back down.  
  
“Can’t see, why can’t we turn on a light?” Vanitas groused.  
  
“Because they’re sleeping!” Sora whispered back.  
  
Roxas gave up immediately and opened his eyes. He wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep now, not with them back. He had tried to outrun their return, but he hadn’t been fast enough in falling unconscious, and there was no point in avoiding it. He listened, no fight left in him.  
  
“It was fine going _ up _ the stairs, but going down in pitch black is just stupid. Why didn’t you bring your phone or something?”  
  
“I didn’t need it! We were just going upstairs for a little bit, it’s no big deal. Here, just,” there was a strange, flapping sound, “I’ll guide you down, just don’t let go. We’ll go down one at a time.”  
  
“This is so stupid,” Vanitas complained, but their footsteps landed in sync all the same.  
  
They stayed quiet until they reached the bottom of the stairs, where it sounded like Sora’s lead set of footsteps stopped. “There, see? We didn’t need the light.”  
  
“Careful.”  
  
“Oh come on, you know what I mean. Not _ that _ light, the regular kind. And don’t pretend you don’t need the heart kind of light too, Mr. Half of One Whole.”  
  
They really were close, weren’t they? Sora was even teasing Vanitas about his painful past, something the rest of them tried to avoid in casual settings.  
  
There was a rustling, the result of shifting posture, maybe crossed arms? And Vanitas sounded a little more serious. “I’m not the only one with another half. When are you going to tell him?”  
  
“When are you?” Sora retorted.  
  
What? What were they talking about? Something about him and Ven?  
  
“I haven’t said anything to him because I spent fifteen years trying to kill him, so now I’m playing by his rules. You don’t just drop things like that on people you used to hunt, even if things are different now. If I push too much too soon, that’s it. Game over.”  
  
“Vani,” Sora interjected, sounding apologetic, but Vanitas wasn’t done. He continued in a quiet, strangely reverent tone.  
  
“I can’t count on a third chance. I can’t risk it. Not if I’ll lose him for good.”  
  
Sadness welled up in Roxas’ chest as he listened. He knew Vanitas had a lot of regrets about the way things had happened, but he didn’t know he was this worried about everything. He always seemed so reluctant to involve himself in the daily affairs of their lives without being invited, which Roxas had always taken to mean that Vanitas was uninterested. Hearing this, though, it must have been something else.  
  
“No you won’t. He’s not like that, you know that,” There was another shifting sound, only smaller and more rhythmic this time as they lingered in the hallway beneath the stairs. It sounded like Sora was rubbing Vanitas’ arm or something. Seemed like something he would do to Roxas anyway. “He’s grown a lot, and so have you! So have all of us.”  
  
“He’s still my missing piece, and I’m not going to risk anything between us for me, and I’m _ sure _ not going to do it for you. But you don’t have that painful past with yours, do you?”  
  
Roxas got the feeling they weren’t discussing whether or not to tell he and Ven about whatever relationship the two of them had forged.  
  
Sora sighed. “No. Not really.”  
  
“So what’s the hold up?”  
  
There was a long pause and Roxas had never felt each millisecond so painfully tick by before then.  
  
“What if it’s just me and he doesn't feel the same way?”  
  
Roxas’ heart stopped in his chest, wanting nothing more than to stride right up to him and take Sora in his arms and hug the sadness right out of him. He couldn’t do that though, not when it would mean revealing that he had been listening in on a private conversation. His eyes pricked with tears.  
  
“Do you think he’ll care?” Vanitas sounded more gentle than Roxas ever would have expected. If he had been asked four hours ago how Vanitas would handle an emotionally vulnerable conversation, Roxas would have bet tens of thousands of munny that he would have scoffed and made fun, but no. He was taking Sora’s fears seriously.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Do you think he’ll stop being your friend if you told him you loved him?”  
  
The tears welled up and over, falling silent to the pillowcase bellow. _He loved him?_  
  
“I tell him that all the time!” Sora deflected with a hollow laugh, knowing how fake it sounded. Vanitas let him ride it out and then when Sora started again, he sounded more subdued. “Besides, I don’t know if it counts as love when it’s just one person.”  
  
_ It counts _ , Roxas insisted internally.  
  
“It counts,” said Vanitas, thank GOD for Vanitas. Roxas felt a surge of gratitude that he was there to say the things he couldn’t.  
  
“I don’t think it does. You have to grow into it together, or it’s not love, it's just. Liking someone. I just can't ask him, it's … He's finally outside, you know? He's finally getting to be his own person and have his own life and he should get to enjoy that without having to think about me for a change. I've always been hanging over his head, whether I knew it or not, I can't just make myself his problem all over again. I know I want to love him, but he’s too special for me to reach for. I think that’s the fairest way to put it.”  
  
“Yeah, okay. Can I tell you something?”  
  
“Sure, what?”  
  
“Between the two of us, I’m the one in Roxas’ shoes with Ven. He’s the light and I’m the dark, just like you’re the light and he’s your dark. If he’s anything like me, there’s nothing he feels as strong as the pull towards you. If you moved towards him, he'd pull you closer.”  
  
Sora didn’t respond, and Roxas laid staring into the darkness, heart swelling with how true what Vanitas was saying rang. He was right. Well, he was wrong, Roxas wasn't Sora's darkness in the slightest, but that wasn't the important part. He had never thought about it in those terms, because they didn’t really apply as well to his and Sora’s connection, but even if they weren’t light and dark reflections, they were two halves of a single, original whole.  
  
Sora was his beginning, and being near him was something he never wanted to end.   
  
“Come on,” Vanitas said after a moment, footsteps moving in towards the living room again.  
  
“Yeah,” Sora agreed, shy smile audible in the shape of his words. “Let’s get some rest.”  
  
Roxas squeezed his eyes shut so tight the last tears fell free as Sora followed Vanitas’ lead. They moved carefully back into the room, their footsteps barely audible as they gingerly picked their way back to their spots. Once they were smack in the center of where all of this had began, they stood together.  
  
The quiet, lingering sound of kissing lips didn’t hurt this time around, and before Roxas knew it, it was over. As Sora and Vanitas each settled back down behind him, Roxas found that more than anything, he was glad they had each other.  
  
He didn’t know when they had gotten to the point they were at together, but it sounded like they were really good for each other. They deserved to have someone they could go to about these things they didn’t feel they could share with anyone else.  
  
Sora deserved that, even if he wasn’t getting it from him.  
  
Roxas was just nestling back down to fall asleep when the noisy, plastic-coated material of his open sleeping bag sounded behind him. On reflex, he tilted his chin to try to hear it better, which made it immediately stop.  
  
A hand brushed over the dip in his waist.  
  
“Sorry,” Sora whispered. “Did I wake you?”  
  
Roxas took Sora’s hand in his and pulled, and Sora went willingly. The two of them shuffled together until they were pressed flush together beneath the covers, Sora’s knees tucked behind Roxas’, Sora's closed mouth pressed to the back of Roxas' neck. He wound his arm around Roxas, palm hooked around his stomach.  
  
Roxas swallowed, voice hoarse. “S’okay. I don’t mind.”  
  
He linked his fingers into Sora’s and drew their hands up, cradled together over his beating heart.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [deeply devoted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23603596) by [Moulinet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moulinet/pseuds/Moulinet)


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